I made a mistake. I tried for the second painting of Selene, the Ancient Greek Moon Goddess, to use Moonglow watercolor.
She didn’t pop out. Rather, the painting looked, well, boring.
I knew I did a pretty good job painting Allie as Selene and I regretted wasting a painting. So, I tried to cover the moonglow up with black gouache.
The result? Kind of drab. Better, but still drab.
I was going to give up on this painting until I took another look at it and decided to really cake on the black gouache. See if I can rescue the painting.
You know what? It worked!

Now Selene really pops out because the black gouache looks like it’s in the background.
So, morale of the story. If you’re going to use black gouache, really cake it on. That’s three to four layers of black gouache to get it that dark.